22 March 17

NZ Wine Tasting \ VIDEO

As Kiwis, there’s plenty to be proud of.

There’s the formidable All Blacks with their transcendent haka, which makes me emotional every time I see it (and more so when it’s performed at a wedding), even though I admittedly don’t have a clue about rugby itself .

The cinematic masterpiece that is the Lord of the Rings trilogy gets me too, the first installment of which put global audiences under Peter Jackson’s spell over 15 years ago (no really, it *has* been that long).

And something that even a person of more ordinary talents like me can strive to cultivate: the world famous down-to-earth attitude. It might seem like a cliché, but the ability to not take things too seriously can truly transform the resolutely mundane into something cheekily entertaining.

The above might read like a NZ tourism page, but as a Kiwi abroad I can confidently say that these topics do crop up time and time again in conversations. And when those conversations happen in the presence of wine, I get an extra lift of Kiwi pride. Cos yep, we’re pretty good at that too!

I don’t know how NZ does it. Our little country produces less than 1% of the world’s wine, yet it’s firmly on the wine map. Or as Chris Stroud from NZ Wine recently put it, “NZ punches well above its weight”.

We were lucky enough to spend a morning with Chris at The New Zealand Cellar in Pop Brixton, where he took us through a tasting of delicious varieties from different winemaking regions. While we were aware that NZ wines are often suggested as pairings for Asian food, we didn’t really know why. So we were there to pick his brains about what makes NZ wines special, and how we should go about choosing a wine to go with our food. Luckily for us, Chris took our amateur wine knowledge in his stride and delivered a really fun morning of learning and giggles.

We’ll be taking three of the wines we tasted and developing recipes for them, so be sure to keep your eye out for those videos too. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this video and give a NZ wine a go the next time you hit the shelves.